Inworld AI

Inworld AI is a developer platform for creating dialog and behavior patterns in AI-powered non-playable characters (NPCs) that mimic the social nature of human interactions and express nuanced emotions within virtual worlds and enterprise applications.

The company’s offerings include “Inworld Studio,” a no-code platform that enables writers, creators, and designers to calibrate elements of cognition and behavior for previously developed NPCs, such as goals, motivations, speech patterns, memories, knowledge, and voices using generative AI in the form of text-to-character prompts. Dialog patterns can be tested in the Inworld Arcade and Studio. The platform also features integrations with game engine Unity and Unreal to deploy characters into game environments and a software development kit (SDK) integration with Node.js. In May 2024, the company launched “Inworld Voice” which offers latency, rhythm, intonation, pitch variation, and pausing. Users can select from 58 AI-enhanced voices that mimic human speech patterns. Following this, the company added multilingual support for Mandarin, Japanese, and Korean for game localization (July 2024).

Games built using the platform include Origins, a neo-noir detective game, where players use microphones to question NPCs powered by Inworld AI and solve a case, among others. In January 2023, Inworld planned to launch Roblox as an Inworld integration to allow developers to add AI characters to their own experiences.

Inworld AI generates revenue through pay-as-you-go pricing schemes, which charge customers based on API interaction usage.

Key customers and partnerships

In April 2023, Inworld AI partnered with AR software provider Geenee AR to bring the company’s generative AI features in Inworld Studio to the Geenee AR platform.

In September 2022, Inworld AI became a Unity Verified Solutions partner, which allowed developers to access Inworld AI through the Unity store. Furthermore, the company offered a grant of up to USD 1 million for creators to build experiences with AI characters.

Funding and financials

In August 2023, the company raised USD 50 million in a funding round led by Lightspeed Venture Partners, bringing the company’s valuation to over USD 500 million. Funds were utilized to bolster R&D efforts, senior headcount expansions, infrastructure investments, and to launch an open-source version of its character engine.

Previously, in August 2022, the company raised USD 50 million in a Series A funding round led by Section 32 and Intel Capital. The company was also part of the 2022 Disney Accelerator, Disney’s startup incubator.